“State Supreme Court Will Hear Challenge to Expo Line to SaMo”

“Send a big ironic thank you note to the Cheviot Hills homeowners who have been unrelenting in their efforts to stymie the Expo Line light rail extension to Santa Monica. After losing twice, the lawsuit brought by Neighbors for Smart Rail will now be heard by the California Supreme Court, Streetsblog reports. The court today granted petition for the case and will hear NFSR’s argument that Metro screwed up the environmental impact report by calculating traffic impacts based on future projections instead of present conditions (Metro probably gave the train’s potential traffic impacts even higher scrutiny by measuring them against traffic 20 years from now when there will likely be more people in LA, but whatever). In their argument, NFSR reference other cases in which future conditions were not allowed to be used in an EIR. “Faced with conflicting opinions, it’s natural for the Supreme Court to want to have the final say in this case and establish case law for similar legal conflicts in the future,” Streetsblog posits.”